Chapter 2654 - Shock and Surrender
Wudi didn't have to look back to know that the wonderians were aging, gaining more wrinkles in the process. "Look at this daddy, I'm so good that I'm raising you two all the way to adulthood!"
The Flameyellow Coffin forced Meng Ying to have no choice but to withdraw the divine wonders to deal with it, but that meant not being able to struggle against the Ninedragon Imperial Tomb, whose rotating drill tail fiercely pierced toward the Dreamchild's chest the moment the divine wonders withdrew!
The two infinitum-class ships finally made contact. Sparks flew from the tail of the Ninedragon Imperial Tomb as eight hundred thousand flameyellow fiends continued keeping the Dreamchild bound. They were ganging up on the Dreamchild from three fronts! There was no way it could hold up for half a day like the Ebonfiend had against the Gladean Ruins.
With a loud boom, the rotating tail finally breached the Dreamchild! Its divine astralship formation shimmered, clearly highlighting the site of the breach. When the Ninedragon Imperial Tomb withdrew its tail, it drew out large shards of the ship's hull along with it. Like a person pierced by a sword, the Dreamchild had been heavily wounded.
Meng Ying felt a shudder throughout their entire bodies as they watched it happen. To think that the Sun had a second infinitum-class divine astralship! The news was no different from a death sentence to the remaining troops of the Exterminatus Army. Meng Ying was just the first to cave to the realization.
The two of them exchanged a glance. They used to have so many tricks up their sleeves, each bringing them infinitely closer to victory with little to no difficulty. As such, they had always picked the option that netted them the most benefit in any engagement. But now, their choices had led to the birth of a new infinitum-class divine astralship. As they were fraught with worry, they lost yet another million infant tanks, causing them to grow into nine-year-olds covered in wrinkles. Not to mention, Tianming was attacked again. It was one crisis after another. With their millennia of experience, there was no way they wouldn't know that they had lost utterly and horribly! The Sun was far stronger than they had fathomed. Wudi and Tianming had caused the rex mundi so much terror that they were shaking down to their tiniest astrons.
"Let's bounce!" The two of them made the final call, painful as it was. Pale white liquid flowed out of their eyes, though nobody could be sure whether it was tears or something else. They decisively pulled back their divine wonders and pressed down on the Flameyellow Coffin. Then they opened the Dreamchild's hatch and flung the hot potato of a coffin out. They could have done so long ago, but they had chosen not to—lest Shenxi Xingtian get to it first—only for it to lead to a disaster of such proportions.
At the very least, Wudi was safe now.
The Dreamchild and the Ninedragon Imperial Tomb could finally engage each other in a proper fight. The white ghost of a ship and its two divine wonders exploded with power, focusing on escaping the grasp of the other ship and succeeding. Then it turned into its spear form and began spinning as it shot away from the Sun. They had steeled their minds on retreating, having completely admitted their loss. If they hadn’t done so, their deaths in this world would be cemented in fact, making them the joke of the entire Skydome Mundus. Since Wudi had kept them near the upper layer of the Flameyellow Guard Formation, as he didn't know if Tianming would succeed back then, that made their retreat not as difficult.
"Do you think I'll let you leave?!" Tianming gave chase with the Ninedragon Imperial Tomb while Wudi had the flameyellow fiends push back against the Dreamchild to slow it down. The fiends were smashed apart nonstop by the tip of the spear, with the Ninedragon Imperial Tomb unable to do much to the Dreamchild from behind.
"Ji Ji!" At Tianming's call, Ji Ji used the power stored within the Sky Palace Formation's miniaturized nova source. Pink nova source from the nine dragon palaces could be seen visibly flowing toward the mechanical dragon heads, illuminating them even more. Within the divine astralship formation, pink light shot out all over the place. The infinitum-class dragon ship let out nine sword-like blasts of light, eradicating many flameyellow fiends that were in the way before slamming into the Dreamchild. The ship greatly rumbled, having been struck where the tail had bored into before. Beams of pink flooded into the internals of the ship. Meng Ying hurriedly tried to block it with their divine wonders, but to no avail!
"It's over...." Their faces completely lost color. They turned back and saw the nova source they had failed to stop smash into countless tanks. Nearly ten million of them had been completely eradicated by that blast of destruction. Meng Ying's heart-rending cry could be heard by Tianming all the way inside the Ninedragon Imperial Tomb. "Li! Tian! Ming!"
Meng Ying's voice was filled with unmistakable fury; their losses had truly been immense. They had probably aged to the point they were youths, albeit wrinkled ones. Consequently, their combat capabilities had no doubt sharply fallen as well.
The Dreamchild had been so badly damaged that its regeneration couldn't keep up. The Ninedragon Imperial Tomb kept ascending as pieces of the Dreamchild fell all around them. If it weren’t for the two divine wonders that were still defending, flameyellow fiends might have ended up inside the ship.
Meng Ying had never considered that they would be pushed to such a haggard extent and were going mad. The shattered tanks physically hurt to look at. What was worse was that Tianming's assault hadn't ended in the slightest. Other powerful elites could survive losing a divine astralship, but these two knew better than anyone how crucial the tanks within the ship were to them.
"Go! Go!" Swallowing all the frustration and contempt, they chose to flee like cowards. The Dreamchild spun faster and faster, finally breaking out of the Flameyellow Guard Formation before the Ninedragon Imperial Tomb could manage to latch on again.
"Do you think you'll be able to escape?" Tianming, charred all over, wore a devilish smirk on his face. He had his ship exit the sea of flames, fully intent on hunting down the Dreamchild without the support of the flameyellow fiends! Once they were in the astralscape, both ships traveled a hundred times faster. If they entered cruising speed, they could go even faster.
"You shan't leave!" Tianming growled with excitement. He knew that his body hadn't completely recovered, yet he was connected to the Omnisentient Threads all the same. He’d held on for so long, and when the Dreamchild had been beaten and battered and about to escape, he finally gave out. He blacked out and fainted in Feiling's embrace. The Ninedragon Imperial Tomb seemed to waver before it fell back down into the astralguard formation, only to be held up by the flameyellow fiends. Tianming was relieved to see the Dreamchild not turning back before he completely lost consciousness.
"We... won...." He smiled right as he fell unconscious. Meanwhile, the remnant troops of the Exterminatus Army and Shenxi Xingtian himself were faced with a torturous prospect.